


You and Me and We

by poisonivory



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 10:37:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3116981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/pseuds/poisonivory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starling City has a lot of problems.  Here's five times a threesome would've fixed everything, or at least made a start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You and Me and We

**Author's Note:**

> As you'll see, these don't all take place in the same timeline.
> 
> Thanks to queenitsy for the beta!

1\. _before the undertaking_

There was a knock on the door, and Laurel swung it open. Oliver stood on the other side, jacket collar turned up and buttoned all the way like armor. “Hi,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, I know you said to come over right away, but…”

He trailed off when he saw Tommy sitting on the couch behind her. Tommy half stood up. “Laurel, what’s going on?” he asked.

Laurel pulled Oliver in and closed the door behind him. “Sit,” she told Tommy. She pointed at Oliver and then the couch. “You, too.”

Tommy looked like he wanted to protest, but sat back down. Oliver perched meekly enough on the couch, as far away from Tommy as he could get. His face was blank, inscrutable; Tommy’s confusion was all too clear under the petulance.

They were both idiots.

Laurel stood in front of them and folded her arms. “What the hell is wrong with you two?” she asked.

Tommy squirmed but didn’t say anything. Oliver just kept that blank gaze on her.

She looked at Tommy. “You _lied_ to me! You told me you didn’t love me, but you do. I know you better than anyone, Tommy, better than even he does. _You love me._ ”

Tommy looked at the ground, but not before she saw his jaw clench. Fine. Laurel didn’t have time to coddle him.

“And you!” She rounded on Oliver. “ _Yes, Laurel, I really do love you. No, Laurel, I can’t be with you._ Do you get off on being withholding, or are you just stupid?”

That got a flicker of emotion out of Oliver. “I just…” He shook his head. “I just want you to be happy, Laurel. I can’t give you what you need. Tommy can. And you’re right.” He gave Tommy a sidelong glance. “He does love you.”

Tommy glowered at Oliver. “Oh, and being with me when she really wants you is going to make her happy? How’s that gonna work?”

“Hello, I’m _in_ the _room!_ ” Laurel snapped. “That’s it? You want me to be happy? That’s what you both want?”

“Yes,” Oliver said. Tommy nodded sulkily.

“Oh, what a relief,” she drawled. “Because you two are the experts on happiness. Are either of you happy?”

This time it was Oliver who looked away, a muscle jumping in his jaw, and Tommy who met her gaze. His chin was steady but his eyes were all heartbreak. Neither of them spoke.

They were idiots, but they were _her_ idiots.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said. “Listen. _I_ decide what’s going to make me happy, not you. _I_ decide who I want to be with. All you get to decide is whether or not you’re going to meet me halfway.” Her tone softened. “And I love you.”

Tommy’s brow furrowed. “Um...which of us were you talking to just there?”

Laurel took a breath. This might send either or both of them out of her apartment for good...but she didn’t see any other way. She wouldn’t _settle_ for any other way; for being negotiated and bargained off like a baseball card.

She took Tommy’s hands and pulled him to his feet. His eyes were wide and apprehensive and so blue, and she could see everything he was feeling on his face as plainly as if he'd written it in a letter.

She kissed him. And it was _Tommy_ , so all of his bravado crumbled instantly and he kissed her back. His hands were in her hair and she breathed in his familiar, overpriced aftershave and it felt right. It felt like home.

Oliver might have made a small noise on the couch behind them. Laurel didn’t particularly take that as a sign to stop. She’d missed kissing Tommy, and besides, she’d waited for Oliver enough times in her life. It was time he waited for her.

So of course it was Tommy who broke the kiss; he was the best of the three of them, after all. “Wait...I don’t…” he said, giving her a confused look and then glancing at Oliver.

She stepped away from Tommy, took Oliver’s hands, and pulled _him_ to his feet. His eyes were blue too, but lighter than Tommy’s, clouded with green and not gray. Right now they told her nothing.

It didn’t matter. She _knew_ him.

She kissed him. He stiffened, all those hard muscles tensing...but when she curved a hand around his jaw, stubble scraping her palm, he yielded, oak giving way to yew.

She hadn’t kissed Oliver Queen in six years and he was so different now. There was a restraint that hadn’t been there before, a control so rigid and overtaxed it had gone brittle - and under it, she suspected, a fire that might consume her. At least, it might if she was alone.

But she wasn’t. And when Oliver pulled back far enough to rest his forehead against hers, so familiar her throat caught, she knew there was still something left of the boy she’d loved.

“I don’t understand,” he said softly.

“Of course you don’t.” She looked over at Tommy, who was staring at them with naked betrayal on his face.

“Laurel, if this is your idea of a joke…” he started.

“I’m not the last slice of pizza,” she said. “You don’t have to decide who ‘gets’ me. And I don’t have to choose.” She took Tommy’s hand and put it in Oliver’s. “And neither do you.”

They were so different now, but the looks they gave her were equally flabbergasted. She tried not to laugh. “Don’t even try. Tommy, you used to get drunk when we were in college and ask if Ollie was a good kisser.” She looked at Oliver. “He wanted _details_.”

Oliver turned his flabbergasted look on Tommy, who gave an uneasy shrug. “I was twenty. And curious.”

Laurel shook her head. “You can say you don’t love him just like you said you didn’t love me, but you’re a lousy liar, Merlyn.”

“I know,” Tommy said, “but he’s a good one.” He was still looking at Oliver, and for the first time Laurel couldn’t read his expression. Whatever he was talking about, Oliver looked...vaguely ashamed, actually.

That, at least, was an expression Laurel knew well. “He is,” she agreed. “He’ll break both of our hearts, probably. But life’s so fucking short, Tommy,” and dammit, she hadn’t meant to cry tonight. “I’m not wasting any more of it being careful.”

“Laurel, don’t - ” Oliver started to say.

But Tommy gave them each one tortured glance, said, “Ah, the hell with it,” and kissed Oliver.

Oliver froze again - or at least, she would have thought he had just from looking at him, but she still had hold of his hand. And he was trembling.

She’d worried that she’d be jealous, watching them together - jealous like she’d been when they wouldn’t let her into their clubhouse in middle school, when they’d hung out at the yacht club all summer while she worked part time jobs, when they’d gone to Europe after high school and her father wouldn’t let her. But they were _beautiful_ , and when Oliver rested his forehead against Tommy’s, just like he always had against Laurel’s, it didn’t feel like she was being replaced. It felt _right_. Like Tommy’s aftershave. Like both of their hands in hers.

It would never be easy - there was too much history for that. Too much of Laurel’s heart had gone on that yacht with Oliver and Sara; too much of Oliver was still on that island.

But it was better than alone. For any of them.

She dropped their hands and walked away. “Come on,” she said. “You both know where the bedroom is.”

And she didn’t have to look behind her to know they’d follow.

-

2\. _before the amazo_

Oliver swung his borrowed sword wide and Slade jumped back to avoid it, narrowly missing getting his last intact shirt ventilated. Oliver laughed. “Almost had you there, Slade. Slowing down?”

“It was a lucky shot,” Slade insisted, circling, waiting for his opening. “Don’t get cocky.”

“Like I have a chance, with you telling me how slow and stupid I am all the time,” Oliver said, but he was still smiling.

“Well, be less slow and stupid, then,” Slade said. He watched as Oliver opened his mouth to retort - and darted forward, his own blade sliding like an eel around Oliver’s. With a flick of the wrist, he sent Oliver’s sword flying.

Reckless - or maybe just trusting - Oliver charged him. Slade tossed his sword aside before he skewered Oliver, grabbed a double handful of Oliver’s shirt, and threw them backwards, rolling over the soft grass until he’d pinned Oliver to the ground, his forearm tight across Oliver’s throat.

“And don’t get distracted by your opponent talking, either,” he said.

Oliver grinned up at him. He’d just lost a fight, he’d nearly impaled himself, and he now had a deadly foreign agent about to choke the life out of him on an abandoned island prison, and still he beamed absolute trust up at Slade.

He was going to get himself killed someday. Slade just hoped he didn’t have to watch.

“I talk all the time. How come you never get distracted?” Oliver asked.

“Kid, after all these months, I’ve learned to tune you out.” Slade knew he should get up, but he was winded - more winded than he would have been from sparring with Oliver even a month ago. Besides, Oliver seemed perfectly happy to let Slade stay there. He really was unfairly pretty that close, even under all the stubble and grime and uncut hair.

“It took you months?” Shado asked. “I did it in days.”

Speaking of unfairly pretty people...Slade looked up at Shado, who sat cross-legged on a nearby rock, fletching an arrow with feathers from her most recent kill. Her dark hair spilled over her smooth shoulder, bared by her tank top, and her dark eyes sparkled with amusement.

Oliver pouted. “You’re both so mean to me.”

Shado’s mouth quirked. “That’s not what you said last night.”

And just like that, this wasn’t fun for Slade anymore. “Right,” he said, bracing his hands on either side of Oliver’s head, ready to push himself up off of the kid. “Let’s go again.”

But Oliver hooked a hand in Slade’s shirt and held him there. “I don’t want to spar anymore today,” he said.

It wasn’t a firm grip. Even if Oliver had been trying, he couldn’t have held Slade for more than a few seconds. But Slade paused, looking back down at those guileless eyes. “Yeah?” he said. “What do you want to do?” He tried to push back the myriad options that filled his mind. Oliver wasn’t talking about that, and even if he had been, Shado was _right there_.

As if he could read Slade’s mind - fuck, he hoped not - Oliver glanced over at Shado.

Who nodded.

And Oliver used his grip on Slade’s shirt to tug him down and kiss him.

For a moment Slade was too stunned to react. Oliver was undaunted, though, his free hand hooking around the back of Slade’s neck to pull him even closer. Slade’s blood roared in response. Everything in him wanted to see just how far Oliver was willing to take this; to press him into the grass and devour him whole. But this didn’t make sense.

He pulled away, but just far enough to look at Shado. He wasn’t a good enough man to get off of Oliver, not when he could feel Oliver hardening against his thigh. “But...you two…”

“We talked about this,” Shado said. She was smiling that quiet, knowing smile of hers. “We share everything else with you. It didn’t seem right not to share this.”

“Plus you’re, like. Really hot,” Oliver added. “Of course, if you don’t want to…” His smile was knowing, too, but cocky again - the smile that always made Slade want to dump him on his ass when they sparred.

Of course, kissing him was another perfectly serviceable option. So Slade did, and he let Oliver feel the hunger he’d been holding back, his mouth insistent, his hands gripping Oliver’s biceps hard enough to leave bruises. Oliver had never had any idea who he was dealing with, though Slade suspected Shado did. Let him see now, so if he decided to run he could do it now, before any damage was done.

But Oliver took everything Slade gave him and gave back just as good, pushing against his hip, fingers tightening in Slade’s shirt and in his hair. He kissed with a playboy’s confidence and Slade remembered Oliver’s stories of back home, the long list of girls and parties and regrets. Slade had a decade on the kid but this might be the one arena where Oliver had more experience. Maybe Slade should be the one running.

Instead he looked up at Shado, still sitting on her rock, though she’d put down her arrow. Her eyes were dark and totally focused. Impossibly beautiful. “Aren’t you going to join us?”

“Later,” Oliver said beneath him, a little breathless. “She wants to watch first.”

Despite himself, Slade shivered. Shit, they really _had_ talked about this.

He reached between them to cup Oliver through his pants, eyes still fixed on Shado. He couldn’t hear her breath catch over Oliver’s moan, but he could see it in her parted lips, the hitch of her ribcage.

“All right.” He smiled. “Let’s put on a show, kid.”

-

3\. _before the unthinkable_

It was two days and three hours since she’d broken up with Oliver, and Sara was mixing some godawful neon blue concoction with a name ending in -tini in a Coast City dive bar.

She liked bartending. It was her only marketable skill - at least, the only one that was legal for her to employ. She could make a lot of money fast, no one asked too many questions, and flirting with customers made her feel vaguely normal again.

Plus, it was easy for her to keep an eye on the guys who were a little too drunk, a little too loud, a little too pushy with the female customers. Easy for her to pick out the predators and follow them after she closed up. Easy to look into a sea of smiles and spot the teeth she’d be breaking that night.

Which wasn’t at _all_ normal. But normal and Sara had parted ways somewhere in the North China Sea, and she’d been making do alone ever since.

As she stuck an umbrella, three strawberries, and a chunk of pineapple into the whatevertini, a familiar voice said, “I don’t suppose you have any Pinot noir that didn’t come from a box.”

Sara couldn’t quite place the voice until she turned - and there was the Huntress, in a drapey purple top that probably cost more than Sara’s bike, her lips a red slash across her face.

She tensed, and then remembered that without her mask and wig, the Huntress - Helena Something Italian, she thought - probably wouldn’t recognize her. “We’ve only got two wines, and we just call ‘em red and white,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “I do have something exquisite in a Pabst _azure_ , though.”

Helena laughed. Sara wondered if _she_ looked that normal when she laughed, if all killers were beautiful when they smiled. “I’ll risk the red,” Helena said, then tilted her head. “Have we met?”

Sara gave her her most vapid smile, the one she used to use on frat boys who might pay for her drink, before...well, before. “Did you go to North Coast High?”

Helena shook her head. “No. My mistake, I guess.” She smiled again as Sara slid a glass of vinegar-smelling wine over to her and put down way more singles than would cover it. “Thanks.”

Sara was saved from more small talk by the arrival of a few rowdy truckers who demanded Coronas while staring down her top. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Helena latch on to a greasy-looking guy in his fifties, who looked like he couldn’t believe his good luck when Helena started talking to him.

“I _wouldn’t_ believe it, buddy,” Sara muttered, and kept an eye on them as she cleared dirty glasses and counted change.

When Helena and her mark slipped out the back, Sara stuffed the tips she’d made so far into her boot and followed. The parking lot, really just a swath of dirt inside a chain-link fence, had a faint and sickly glow from the neon sign over the bar, but it was enough for Sara to make out Helena clocking the mark in the head, throwing him to the ground, and aiming one of her wrist crossbows at him.

No time for a subtle approach. Sara bolted across the lot and tackled Helena.

They hit the ground hard, rolling. Helena reacted fast, scrabbling and kicking. She had more weight and a longer reach, but her rich girl tae bo lessons were no match for League of Assassins training.

Her eyes went wide as Sara pinned her. “Canary.”

“Bingo,” Sara said. “You shouldn’t’ve broken out of jail.”

Helena’s red lips curled. “Broken out? Please. That Waller woman practically bought me a pony after the names I gave her. Now get the hell off me!”

Fucking Waller. Of course. “So you can kill Baldy over there? No thanks.”

“It’s a tranq arrow! Look!” Helena wiggled her wrist, trapped in the bend of Sara’s knee. “I’m not killing anymore. Part of my deal with A.R.G.U.S.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He’s made!” Helena said. “No one said I couldn’t take down the mob, as long as I leave them alive. This piece of shit launders money for my uncle. Let me go and he’ll rot safely in prison, I swear to - ” 

“Crazy fucking bitches!” _Shit._ Sara’d thought Baldy was out, but suddenly she was looking down the barrel of his gun.

“Motherfuck - ” Helena spat, and rolled them over, knocking Sara out of the way.

Baldy fired. Red spurted from Helena’s shoulder.

Sara kicked Baldy’s leg out from under him, grabbed the gun, and brought it down on his head, dropping him.

She looked at Helena, who was sitting up, squeezing her shoulder as blood trickled through her fingers. Helena raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome, asshole.”

Well, shit.

She brought Helena back to her crappy hotel room. Helena looked incongruously high-class perched on the thin mattress, in a white bandage and black bra. A silver cross dangled between her breasts.

“So you got a name?” she asked as Sara packed the remains of her first aid kit in her ratty old knapsack, next to some power bars and a t-shirt of Oliver’s she’d stolen.

What the hell. “Sara,” she said. Helena’s eyebrows rose. “Yeah. That Sara.”

Helena shook her head. “You know, he took me to see your grave once.”

Jesus, Ollie. “What a romantic.”

“He was trying to teach me some kind of lesson, about regret or something.” Helena’s smile was sharp as a crossbow bolt. “But you’re not dead, so I guess it didn’t take.”

“It does eventually,” Sara said. “Trust me. I’ve killed a lot more than you have, and even if you don’t feel anything at first - ”

“Oh, shut up,” Helena said, rolling her eyes. “You’re just like Oliver, preaching about how morally goddamn pure you are. Why not just admit that you want to fuck me and that’s what bothers you so much?”

“I don’t - ”

Helena snorted. “You’ve been checking me out since I walked into the bar. We can do this or not, dead girl, but at least let’s not fucking lie about it.”

And, well. Sara always did like them rich and crazy.

A few days later Helena woke up as Sara was packing. “Where are you going?”

“Starling,” Sara said. “Felicity just texted me. Slade just killed Moira Queen. He’s going to burn the city to the ground. I have to get back to my family.”

“Who the hell is Slade?”

“Someone Oliver and I knew years ago. Crazy dangerous. And regular crazy, too.”

“Sounds like you could use some help,” Helena said, and didn’t move.

Sara shook her head. “We’re talking ‘roided up, unkillable monsters here. A few crossbow bolts aren’t going to stop them.”

“So why are _you_ going?”

“He’s after everyone Oliver loves,” Sara said. “That’s my family.” _He’s_ my family, too, she didn’t say.

Helena looked out the window for a minute, even though there was nothing to see but an abandoned refinery, its windows boarded up. “I met Moira once. She was nice to me. Of course, she didn’t realize I was only at her house to threaten her son.” Her eyes flickered to Sara’s, then away, mascara smudged beneath the blue of them. “I wonder what it’s like to love your family.”

Sara didn’t say anything.

Finally Helena kicked back the sheets and reached for her underwear. “Oh, what the hell,” she said. “I wasn’t going to die in my sleep anyway.”

It was long after the blood and fire, after Giordano Tunnel and the warehouse, that they talked about it. Oh, Oliver made his feelings about Sara bringing Helena in clear the minute they showed up in Starling City, just as he did when she called in the League. But Starling City was still standing, and as far as Sara was concerned, that meant she’d made the right call.

Nyssa had wanted her to promise to return to Nanda Parbat in exchange, but Sara held her ground. “I can’t,” she’d said, looking into Nyssa’s beautiful face and knowing it might be the last time. “I have work to do here.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Nyssa had said drily, gazing over her shoulder to where Helena and Diggle were glaring at each other. “Do you want a piece of advice?” She didn’t wait for Sara’s response. “Don’t fall in love with the broken bird you take in to heal. It’s a wild animal, and those will only break your heart.”

“It’s not like that,” Sara said, though she could see that Nyssa didn’t believe her. “I’m sorry, Nyssa. I _do_ love you, you know.”

Nyssa smiled sadly. “But not enough. I know.” She leaned in and gave Sara a chaste kiss on the lips. “Goodbye, Ta-er al-Sahfer. Be bold.”

“Like you taught me,” Sara said, and watched Nyssa and her men board the ship.

She knew Ollie was behind her without turning around. “What.”

“Can I see you in the foundry, please?” His voice was thin, like he was too tired to be properly angry. “Bring her.”

So it was in the foundry that they had it out, masks in a pile by Felicity’s workstation, Sara shaking her sweat-damp hair out, free from the wig. Oliver was quiet a long time and she let him simmer, in no rush for the lecture she knew was coming. Helena ignored them both, poking through Oliver’s equipment like she was shopping in a very deadly boutique.

“What were you thinking,” he said finally, his tone flat.

“That you could use all the help you could get,” Sara retorted. “And I was right.”

“You brought in killers - ”

“So did Diggle.”

“That’s different - ”

“Why, because you told him to?” she snapped. “I don’t work for you, Oliver. I made the decision I thought would be best for Starling. It’s my city, too.”

He stepped in closer. God, she could smell him, so familiar, and she was so tired. She wanted to sleep for a year, and she wanted to do it in his arms, where she could be twenty and stupid again and so in love with her sister’s boyfriend she lost all reason. Where she could be with someone else who’d drowned, and drowned, and lived to tell the tale.

“You don’t know her like I do,” Oliver said, lowering his voice. “She’s not like us. She doesn’t want to be helped, she doesn’t want to change…”

“God, could you possibly be any more patronizing?” Helena asked. They both turned to look at her. “Sound carries down here, you know. And for the record, I didn’t kill anyone tonight. I just used those antidote arrows you gave me, so you can untwist. What’s _your_ death toll anyway, _Arrow?_ ”

“We’re not _talking_ about me - ”

“Why not? Let’s talk about you. Or let’s talk about her.” Helena pointed. “You took a vow. She feels guilty. I made a promise to the government. We’ve all killed, we all love leather, we’ve all slept together. We’re basically triplets.” She paused. “Horrifying incest triplets, but you get my drift.”

Oliver looked genuinely surprised at that. “Wait. You two…?”

Sara shrugged. Helena smirked. Oliver sighed and rubbed his right temple. “You have a type,” he told Sara.

“What, and you don’t?” she asked.

Oliver looked at his hands. “I thought...I thought maybe part of the reason you came back was for me.”

“You told Slade you loved Felicity.”

“Slade would never buy you as bait,” he said, his expression wry. “And he wouldn’t have kept you alive, not after Shado.” He met her eyes. “I missed you.”

And then it was too hard not to be in his arms, forehead pressed to his collarbone. She did so many hard things every day; she didn’t let herself have any of the things she once loved. She wanted to let herself have this.

“I missed you too,” she mumbled into that hood, that stupid green hood. Too many people had died in it. Any day he could be next.

“Oh, Jesus,” Helena said, and Sara turned her head to see Helena picking up her mask again, her finger through the eyehole like a hook. “If you two are going to start whispering sweet nothings, can I go?”

Sara hadn’t known Helena that long, but she thought she knew her better than Oliver did, actually. Or maybe she just _understood_ her better. At least enough to know when there was uncertainty hiding behind Helena’s bravado. “No,” she said.

Helena cocked her head, dark hair spilling like a river under the foundry’s fluorescent lights. “Look, I’m sure that you think your romance is one for the ages, but it’s really not all that fun to watch, so…”

“Please.” Sara wrapped her arms around Oliver’s waist and smiled. “Why not just admit that you want to fuck us and that’s what bothers you so much?”

She felt Oliver tense in her arms, twisting to look at her, but she kept her gaze locked on Helena, waiting to see her reaction. What she’d said wasn’t what she meant, not really. Helena wasn’t wrong when she said they were the same. They were all climbing out of somewhere dark and deep, climbing to a place they could be better than they were. Oliver might be a little ahead of Sara; Helena might be a little behind.

But Sara was learning the climb was easier with help. She didn’t want any of them to lose their footing.

Helena shook her head, then laughed. Sara remembered wondering if all killers were beautiful when they laughed. Now she wondered if the laugh was the part of Helena the killer in her couldn’t touch.

“All right,” Helena said, and dropped her mask on the table. “I’ll stay.”

\- 

4\. _before nanda parbat_

_Malcolm stared at the plate in front of him. The cut of lamb lying on it was perfectly cooked, juices puddling red on its cooling flesh. It paired beautifully with the rich, full-bodied wine in his nearly-untouched glass. Music wafted in from the next room, something by Strauss. Malcolm loved Strauss._

_He couldn't enjoy any of it._

_"How's the food, Malcolm?" Moira asked._

_Malcolm looked up at the other end of the table, where Robert and Moira were both watching him. He forced a smile and made a show of cutting himself another bite. "It's delicious, Moira. As always."_

_She smiled back, her seamlessly gracious hostess smile. Robert, never as adept at hiding his feelings, looked concerned, so Malcolm put the bite into his mouth and chewed. It tasted like sawdust, just like everything he'd eaten had tasted for months now._

_It had been Robert's idea to have Malcolm come over for dinner. He hadn't said so, but Malcolm knew his old friend was trying to cheer him up._

_But dinner was stiff and uncomfortable. The house echoed with silence - they'd sent little Oliver to spend the night at Merlyn Manor, with Tommy and the nanny. The boys had been spending a lot of nights together recently, mostly at the Queens'. Tommy had been having nightmares lately, but he seemed to have fewer of them when he wasn't alone._

_Of course, Malcolm could have tried to assuage the nightmares himself, instead of sending an eight-year-old boy in to do it for him. But he had never been any good at comforting Tommy. Rebecca would have been better at vanquishing Tommy's fears…but then, if Rebecca was still here, Tommy wouldn't be having nightmares in the first place._

_It was so damned unfair. Rebecca had done nothing wrong. Rebecca had never done anything wrong. Malcolm had been the one to ignore her, and for that she had been punished._

_It was this city - this sprawling, dark labyrinth, festering and oozing with too much humanity. Malcolm had always seen it as his playground, a setting for him to make his father's fortune multiply in his hands, like the magicians that had dazzled him as a child. Now he saw that like that birthday party magic, everything he'd believed in had been mere slight of hand, hiding something vicious and obscene._

_Starling City wasn't a playground; it was a cancer. Something needed to burn the sick parts out. Some_ one _needed to burn them out. Maybe…_

_"Malcolm!"_

_Malcolm started and looked up again. Now Robert wasn't even_ trying _to hide his concern. "Malcolm, are you all right?" he asked, then winced. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid question."_

_"It's fine." Malcolm shook his head. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. I'm afraid I'm not very good company lately."_

_"We didn't invite you here to entertain us," Robert said. "We worry about you. I know you haven't been going into the office. You're all alone in that house while Tommy's at school, and it can't be good for you."_

_"Well, maybe that's what I deserve," Malcolm said, quietly enough, but Robert heard it._

_"You have to stop blaming yourself, Malcolm."_

_"Then who should I blame?" Malcolm snapped._

_Robert didn't rise to the bait of his tone. "Maybe the man who killed her?"_

_"Oh, I do," Malcolm said. "And he'll get his reckoning, I assure you. But until then I at least owe Rebecca the courage to look in the mirror and recognize that I failed her too, and all the lovely dinners in the world won't - "_

_Moira yawned. Loudly._

_Malcolm stared. Moira was the perfect hostess, polite to a fault. She could listen to Starling City’s worst bores drone on for hours and look utterly captivated. To yawn when someone else was speaking was bafflingly gauche of her, but to do it when Malcolm was talking about Rebecca was cruelty he wouldn’t have thought her capable of._

_And then she shocked him further by pushing her chair away from the table and standing up. "I'm sorry, but I'm suddenly so tired. I'm going to go upstairs to bed." She looked at her husband. "Robert?"_

_Robert looked at her and they had a silent conversation for a minute, one that sent a pang through Malcolm because it was so like the ones he used to have with Rebecca. Then Robert's confusion cleared. "Oh! Oh, right." He stood up as well. His tone was heavy with significance. "I believe I'll join you."_

_Malcolm couldn't make sense of what he was hearing. His two dearest friends had invited him over to help him get his mind off his dead wife and now they were abandoning him in the middle of dinner to go have_ sex? _He sat there, flabbergasted, as they walked away._

_But they stopped in the doorway. "Malcolm, aren't you coming?" Moira asked._

_"I…what?"_

_Robert slipped an arm around Moira's waist. "Like I said. We worry about you," he said, his tone kind. "You spend too much time alone. You don't have to."_

_It took a moment for Malcolm to understand what they were offering him. His fork fell from his stunned fingers, hitting the tablecloth with a dull thump._

_They were his friends. His business associates. His son's best friend's parents._

_But he thought of his bed at the manor, too cold and too big without Rebecca in it, and the countless hours he'd spent staring at the darkened ceiling with bloodshot eyes. Tommy wasn't the only one having nightmares._

_He folded his napkin and stood up. "After you," he said, and followed his friends upstairs._

-

5\. _after_

They find him together. They always find him together.

It’s John who half-helps, half-carries him out of the hole he’s crawled into, his arm stretched across John’s broad shoulders, every muscle so twisted with pain he can’t sort out what’s broken and what’s not - but it’s Felicity who makes him stand to get there, her eyes luminous with angry tears.

It’s Felicity who sits in the back of the van and holds his hand, who doesn’t say a word when every bump jostles his injuries and he’s squeezing her fingers so tightly it has to hurt - but it’s John who takes the long way, the slow way, to avoid the worst roads.

“I thought you were dead,” Felicity says, and he doesn’t answer because he doesn’t think she wants to hear, _I wanted to be._

It’s Felicity who lets him bleed on her bed because he can’t manage the stairs to the foundry and her apartment is on the ground level - but it’s John who sews him back together with steady, even stitches, like building a new man from scraps.

It’s John who makes him eat, wearing him down with logic and well-meaning bullying until he relents - but it’s Felicity who holds the spoon for him and pretends it isn’t embarrassing for any of them.

“You have to stop running away when bad things happen,” John says, and he doesn’t answer because that’s not a promise he trusts himself to keep.

John watches the door and windows while Oliver pretends to sleep, because Felicity’s apartment isn’t secure and some hood looking to make a name for himself by killing the Arrow might have seen them go inside. John can’t have slept last night and maybe not the night before - what day is it? - but his back is straight and his eyes are open, because his people need him.

When Oliver _does_ sleep, and nightmares make him thrash so hard he threatens to open his stitches again, Felicity slips in behind him and holds him down. Her arms are all softness, no muscle, and he could break them so easily even lost in a fever dream, but she holds him as fearlessly as she does everything else, and the thrum of her heart against his spine keeps the nightmares away.

He knows, with the same surety that tells him if the shot he’s just released will fly true, that he does not deserve them.

He has seen enough of the world to know what goodness is. He has seen too much of the world to have any illusions about his own. But where the fire only tempered him, like the point of an arrow hardened over coals, it left them pure and shining. He can’t understand why everyone doesn’t see.

Barry is a hero.

Sara _was_ a hero.

Oliver is trying.

He tells Sara as much as he drifts between sleep and something deeper. He tells Tommy he’s trying to be better. He tells his mother he’s sorry, and sees Shado laugh in the dappled light of the forest.

Somewhere he can hear Felicity crying. He wants to tell her that it’s okay, he knows they’re not real and he’s not ready to join them, but he’s too tired to make the words come out right.

The sun comes up. Light and shadow dance on Felicity’s IKEA duvet. John makes him eat again and helps him to the bathroom.

When cool lips brush his forehead, he doesn’t know whose they are.

He wakes with the second sunrise and his head is clear. After forty-eight hours John must know there’s only a slim chance they were followed, because he’s asleep on Oliver’s other side, his arm a heavy weight across Oliver’s stomach. His fingers are tangled with Felicity’s.

Oliver tugs the blanket up over John’s bare shoulder and brushes a lock of hair off Felicity’s face. He looks up at the ceiling, and smiles when he sees that Felicity’s put up the same kind of glow-in-the-dark stars he had when he was a kid, pale green in the daylight and laid out to match the constellations over Starling City in the summer. It’s the first time he’s smiled in a long time, and it feels strange, but not bad.

He settles between them and listens to their syncopated heartbeats. He still doesn’t deserve them.

But he’s trying. And maybe someday he will.


End file.
